This is the second of three albums that came about as the result of an all-night recording session that took place in Los Angeles on November 12 and 13, 1956. Although
Hampton Hawes spontaneously created five original tunes at this extraordinarily inspired date, everything on
Vol. 2 comes directly out of the standard bop musician's working repertoire. The quartet, with bassist
Red Mitchell, guitarist
Jim Hall, and drummer
Eldridge "Bruz" Freeman, collectively improvise their way through four attractive standards ("I Should Care" turned out to be the only slow ballad of the entire session) and three of
Dizzy Gillespie's most refreshing creations. In 1958
Hawes was quoted as saying "It's hard to put into words how good it feels to play jazz when it's really swinging...I've reached a point where the music fills you up so much emotionally that you feel like shouting hallelujah -- like people do in church when they're converted to God. That's the way I was feeling the night we recorded
All Night Session!" The complete
All Night Session! was reissued in its entirety with one previously unreleased track by the Definitive label in 2007.